Why I Read Romance

Why Romance?

IT’S LIKE THERAPY THURSDAY!!

If you’ve been following my blog, or you know me personally, you know that my reading tastes are quite broad and voracious. Today I want to rant about something…I find that some people look down upon romance readers. I take offense to that! I have had a long love affair with romance books…and I’m not ashamed. Many of my upcoming posts over the next few weeks are heavy in this section. The reason for that is that romance books are like a comfort item for me. They are like a warm fuzzy blanket, or a bowl of ice cream.

I’ll just admit…I’m a messy girl, with messy emotions. I am moved by writers that can create strong characters with realistic emotion. A good romance book can suck me in, make me laugh, make me cry…make me feel. And feeling for me is hard. Relationships are so consuming and so complicated. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized about myself that I’m just not very good at relationships. I have a hard time being loved, a hard time opening up to emotion.  

Through a prompt class I wrote about some of my early relationships. My inability to truly open up goes way back, and writing it out helped me see trends in how I approach emotional connections.
Thought I would share some of what I wrote in my “first love” essay.

My first experience with “love” was in my early teens. To set the stage, I was an awkward child. I had a tall, skinny body and a massive amount of crazy, curly hair. Growing up in a small town, being unique wasn’t a good thing. I didn’t feel like the other girls. I felt like an outsider. My emotions were too big for my body, and if I let them out I thought bad things would happen. I started to control my feelings, locking them away.

I was always “boy crazy.” I remember, even in preschool, fixating on boys. I was born knowing that I wanted a mate and I was on a mission to pick him out. A boy named Max was always on my radar at five years old. He intrigued me, but always seemed out of my reach.

Max was such a sweet boy. He had curly hair too and his eyes were a light, clear blue. He had this engaging smile and an outgoing attitude. I felt surrounded by beautiful, athletic girls, while I was the strange, bookish friend. Over the years there were times that Max chose me over these other girls. He was the first (maybe only) boy to ever “pick” me as his first choice. I remember those times vividly.
Fast-forward to our early teens. I can still clearly recall the night he asked me to be his girlfriend. I said yes, of course, and was incredibly excited about it. I stayed up late with butterflies in my tummy, giggling and talking about him to my friend.

Before Max, I had never really been kissed. I had certainly never done anything beyond kissing. He and I started experimenting right away. There was this sizzling chemistry every time I was around him. Even holding his hand I felt this charge. I couldn’t be around him enough.  From the first time we “made out,” I remember the smile on his face, how gently he held me, the feeling of my lips after kissing for hours. Over the months we snuck away whenever we could. Even at school we would catch a quick kiss in the hallway, or hold hands until we were caught. When we weren’t together we would talk on the phone for hours. I had never had this connection with another person.

The way I felt about Max scared me. When we were together I was high up in the sky, but I had this fear that I would fall at any moment. I was jealous of other girls and I hated that feeling. I was certain that he would realize that he could do so much better than me. Everyone liked him, and he only looked at me. There was this pressure to be a perfect girlfriend, because--in my eyes, he was a perfect boyfriend.

Did I mention that I’m a messy girl, with messy thoughts? So, I acted out…ended up kissing another boy. And Max forgave me, still wanted to be with me. I ruined the relationship on purpose. I was self-destructive. I didn’t feel worthy of love, so I sabotaged the relationship. I hurt him and I still feel guilty about that.

This wasn’t the last time I felt these feelings. I’ve had numerous relationships along the way and learned something about myself from each one. It also wasn’t the last time I self- destructed. The moral is that relationships are intense. Very few people go on to be with the first person they feel this way about. There are a lot of broken people out there—but sometimes they find love.

In a romance novel characters, with flaws, find their happily ever after. Now, do I believe in happily ever after? Probably not, but that’s a different story! I get a tingly feeling when I’m reading a good romance, when I think of successful relationships I feel warm and happy. I will never stop reading these love stories and I will never feel embarrassed about the fact that I do so!